LinkedIn Ads Mastery: Boost Visibility and ROI with Expert Strategies https://www.searchscientists.com/category/linkedin-ads/ We've Got PPC Down to a Science Thu, 16 Jan 2025 17:58:43 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://michael100.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Search-Scientists-beaker-150x150.jpg LinkedIn Ads Mastery: Boost Visibility and ROI with Expert Strategies https://www.searchscientists.com/category/linkedin-ads/ 32 32 Creating Your First LinkedIn Ads Campaign – Part 1: The Low-Down On LinkedIn Ad Formats https://www.searchscientists.com/linkedin-ads/ https://www.searchscientists.com/linkedin-ads/#respond Thu, 16 Jan 2025 11:53:58 +0000 https://www.searchscientists.com/?p=9027 When it comes to advertising reach, LinkedIn Ads can’t hold a candle to Google Ads… but does that mean you should write LinkedIn off immediately?

No, of course not.

While Google is and will probably always be the go-to platform for advertisers from around the globe, LinkedIn is quickly becoming a hot favorite among those who want to reach out to B2B decision makers.

The post Creating Your First LinkedIn Ads Campaign – Part 1: The Low-Down On LinkedIn Ad Formats appeared first on Search Scientists.

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When it comes to advertising reach, LinkedIn Ads can’t hold a candle to Google Ads… but does that mean you should write LinkedIn off immediately?

No, of course not.

While Google is and will probably always be the go-to platform for advertisers from around the globe, LinkedIn is quickly becoming a hot favorite among those who want to reach out to B2B decision makers.

Consider this: LinkedIn has over 500 million members, and 40% of their Monthly Active Users log onto the platform on a daily basis.

Out of those 500 million members, 61 million are senior level influencers, and 40 million are in decision-making positions.

The bottom line? If you’re trying to sell a product or a service, and you want to get connected to the people in charge, LinkedIn is definitely a good bet.

LinkedIn Ads - business time
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Now, we’ve put together a 3-part series that walks you through how to create your very first LinkedIn Ads Campaign.

In this blog post (which is the first of our series!), we’ll be diving into:

  • Who should advertise on LinkedIn
  • What you should know before advertising on LinkedIn
  • The different types of LinkedIn Ads you can run

In our subsequent articles, we’ll move on to discussing LinkedIn Ads best practices, advanced LinkedIn tips and tricks, and more.

Ready? Let’s jump right in!

Table of Contents

Who should advertise on LinkedIn? Who shouldn’t?

We’ve already mentioned that those who want to reach out to B2B decision makers will find LinkedIn a good fit, but let’s unpack that a bit.

First up, LinkedIn isn’t just used by people in the US — it’s popular worldwide.

More specifically, more than 70% of LinkedIn users are based outside the US. The countries which boast the most LinkedIn users are America, India, Brazil, Great Britain, and Canada.

When it comes to age groups, 63% of LinkedIn users are between 25 to 54 years of age:

LinkedIn Users Age
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With regards to company size, most LinkedIn users work at large-scale firms instead of start-ups and SMEs:

LinkedIn Users Company Size
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Next, you’re more likely to find LinkedIn users in Finance, Medical, Educational, High Tech, and Manufacturing industries:

And the most common job function on LinkedIn is Operations, followed by Sales:

LinkedIn Users Industries Chart
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LinkedIn Users Job Industry Breakdown
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At the end of the day, we’d say that as long as you’re in the B2B industry, it’s worth giving LinkedIn Ads a shot.

If you’re in the B2C industry, though, and you want to reach out to consumers instead of business professionals, then you’re better off with sticking to Google Ads or Facebook Ads.

What you should know before advertising on LinkedIn

Assuming you’re new to LinkedIn Ads, you’ve probably got a ton of questions running through your mind.

In this section, we seek to address as many of these questions as we can, and shed some light on LinkedIn advertising!

Q: Is it hard to advertise on LinkedIn?

Nope, not at all. To get started, all you need to do is create an account and set up your billing method. Once you do this, you’ll be able to create your first ad!

Create first ad with LinkedIn
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Q: What pricing models do LinkedIn Ads have?

With LinkedIn Ads, there are three different pricing options that you can choose from:

  • Cost Per Click (CPC)
  • Cost Per Impressions (CPM)
  • Cost Per Send (CPS).

If you’ve used Google Ads or Facebook Ads before, you’ll be familiar with CPC and CPM. These are fairly straightforward; advertisers generally use CPC to generate traffic to their site or to generate leads, but if the goal is to drive awareness, then CPM is a better bet.

What about CPS? This is a special pricing option that’s utilized with Sponsored InMail messages. With this option, you’re basically paying every time your InMail message has been successfully delivered.

We’ve been optimizing and auditing campaigns for years, and have looked at 100’s of accounts over time. While Google Ads may be the most popular platform, LinkedIn Ads can also be a great resource to target your ideal customers.

Get your own action plan on the best type of LinkedIn Ads for your business.
Request a proposal

Q: How much do LinkedIn Ads cost?

The price of your LinkedIn Ads will depend on several factors, including who your target audience is (and whether that audience is highly sought after).

That said, if you want a benchmark to work with, AdStage states that advertisers on LinkedIn can expect an average of:

  • $6.59 CPM
  • $5.26 CPC
  • 0.13% CTR

Now, if you’re currently running ads on Google, and your CPC is lower than $5.26, does this mean that you shouldn’t bother with LinkedIn?

Not quite. If you look at an individual metric, this doesn’t give you the whole picture — you’ll have to look at your CPC in context of your CTR in order to figure out which platform will give you more bang for your buck.

Here’s an example: HubSpot says that its customers who advertise on LinkedIn pay around $5.74 per click, and that those who advertise on Google Ads only pay $3.35 per click.

At first glance, it might seem like LinkedIn advertisers are throwing their money down the drain, but that’s far from the truth.

LinkedIn Ads - Waste Money
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Once you take into account LinkedIn’s higher conversion rate, it’s obvious that HubSpot’s customers’ LinkedIn Ads are actually more cost-effective:

Google Adwords vs LinkedIn with $1,000 budget
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Moral of the story? Instead of honing in on a specific metric, remember to look at the big picture!

Q: How do you target people on LinkedIn?

At the basic level, you can target LinkedIn users based on their company size, title, industry or location.

Options to target your audience
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On top of that, LinkedIn also gives you the power to carry out advanced targeting features. For instance, you can use:

Different types of LinkedIn Ads

To wrap up, we’ll walk you through the different formats of LinkedIn Ads that are available to advertisers.

Format: Sponsored Content

Sponsored content example
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With Sponsored Content, you’re basically promoting a piece of content that you’ve already published on your company’s LinkedIn page.

You can use Sponsored Content to:

  • Drive brand awareness
  • Drive click-throughs to a landing page
  • Indirectly grow your number of followers for your company’s page

Format: Direct Sponsored Content

Direct Sponsored Content is pretty similar to Sponsored Content, with one important caveat: here, you’re promoting content without first posting said content to your LinkedIn page.

Again, this targeting method is great for driving brand awareness and landing page click-throughs, and also indirectly growing your followers.

If you’re new to LinkedIn Ads, we recommending starting with Sponsored Content. You can move on to A/B testing your content using Direct Sponsored Content once you’re more familiar with how LinkedIn’s ad platform works.  

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Format: Text Ads

Text Ads are pretty similar to Search Ads on Google — you can look at these as an easy way to drive traffic to your LinkedIn page or website.

Text Ads Example
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All you have to do is choose who you want to target, then set up your ad with a headline, description, and image. That’s all there is to it!

Note that Text Ads only run on desktop; if you want to target mobile users, you’ll have to opt for another ad format.

You can use Text Ads to:

  • Drive click-throughs to a landing page

Format: Sponsored InMail

Remember how back when Facebook launched its Messenger Ads, this threw the marketing industry into a tizzy?

Well, the joke’s on us… LinkedIn’s actually had an equivalent ad format (Sponsored InMail!) for ages now.

Sponsored InMail Example
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If you’re wondering how this works, basically, you pay to have your message directed straight to your prospect or lead’s mailbox.

You can customize your greeting, body text, and Call To Action button, and even add a link within the message body.

You can use Sponsored InMail to:

  • Drive click-throughs to a landing page
  • Promote lead magnets and other downloadable content
  • Send personalized invites to webinars and other events
  • Get in touch with leads to kickstart your LinkedIn Account Based Marketing

Format: Video Ads

There are some outdated articles floating around online that claim LinkedIn doesn’t offer video ads, but don’t be mistaken… you definitely CAN create video ads on LinkedIn.

How do these ads work?

If you want to promote video content that’s uploaded on your Company Page, you’ll have to create a Sponsored Content campaign. To test video ads for different audiences without publishing these on your page, set up a Direct Sponsored Content campaign.

You can use Video Ads to:

  • Drive click-throughs to a landing page or promote any sort of offer.
  • Drive brand awareness
  • Indirectly grow your number of followers for your company’s page. Video ads are a highly versatile medium!

Format: Dynamic Ads

Dynamic ads are automatically populated with information from LinkedIn member profiles. You can use these to deliver personalized messages to LinkedIn users, within their feeds.

Personalized Dynamic Ads
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Like Video Ads, Dynamic Ads are fairly versatile. You can use these to:

  • Grow your followers on your Company Page
  • Drive traffic to a landing page
  • Promote a lead magnet or other form of content
  • Promote your other offers

Format: Lead Gen Forms

If your goal is to generate leads for your company, then LinkedIn’s Lead Gen Forms will definitely be up your alley.

These don’t redirect LinkedIn users to an external webpage; instead, they allow users to sign up for your offer without leaving their LinkedIn app.

Lead Gen Forms Example
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This decreases the amount of friction, and increases your conversions!

You can use Lead Gen Ads to:

  • Generate leads
  • Promote content (lead magnets, webinars, etc)
  • Grow your email list

A final word on creating your first LinkedIn Ads campaign

Alright, that’s it for our first installment of our LinkedIn Ads Guide! We’ve covered plenty of ground here, so this calls for a fist bump…

LinkedIn Ads - finished covering everything
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Now that you’re familiar with the basics of LinkedIn Ads, and you understand the different LinkedIn ad formats, stay tuned for Part Two of our guide where we teach you how to set up your very first LinkedIn campaign.

If you’ve got any questions about LinkedIn Ads, or you’d like to share your experiences with them, feel free to leave us a comment below. 👇

Otherwise, we’ll catch ya over in Part Two of our guide!

Check out more blog posts:

The post Creating Your First LinkedIn Ads Campaign – Part 1: The Low-Down On LinkedIn Ad Formats appeared first on Search Scientists.

]]> https://www.searchscientists.com/linkedin-ads/feed/ 0 Creating Your First LinkedIn Ads Campaign – Part 3: LinkedIn Ads Vs Facebook Ads https://www.searchscientists.com/linkedin-ads-vs-facebook-ads/ https://www.searchscientists.com/linkedin-ads-vs-facebook-ads/#respond Fri, 26 Apr 2019 12:39:41 +0000 https://www.searchscientists.com/?p=9593 You’re reading the third installment of our series on LinkedIn ads — in this post, we discuss the differences between LinkedIn Ads vs Facebook Ads, and talk about the pros and cons that each ad platform brings to the table.

The post Creating Your First LinkedIn Ads Campaign – Part 3: LinkedIn Ads Vs Facebook Ads appeared first on Search Scientists.

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You’re reading the third installment of our series on LinkedIn ads — in this post, we discuss the differences between LinkedIn Ads vs Facebook Ads, and talk about the pros and cons that each ad platform brings to the table.

If you haven’t seen the other posts in our series, here are the links so you can check them out:

Alright, let’s get started!

LinkedIn Ads vs Facebook Ads: which should you use?

When looking at LinkedIn and Facebook, it’s obvious that these cater to different audiences.

Here’s a quick recap from our first post on LinkedIn ads:

Simply put, LinkedIn is used predominantly by business professionals, and these folks log into LinkedIn to discover new business opportunities, network with their contacts, and improve their knowledge and skill sets.

People use LinkedIn to maintain connections and make new ones | linkedin ads vs facebook ads
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On the other hand however, Facebook is an entirely different beast. Here are some statistics:

Basically, Facebook is the “default” social media platform that everyone (including your best friend, their unborn child, and your grandmother) is on.

These people typically use Facebook for entertainment (gotta love those funny dog videos) and to keep in touch with their friends and family.

LinkedIn Ads vs Facebook Ads: which is more expensive?

If you do a quick Google search, you’ll find that the average Cost Per Click (CPC) for LinkedIn ads is $5.26, and the same cost for Facebook ads is $1.72.

Does that mean that LinkedIn ads are more expensive (and therefore less profitable) than Facebook ads?

Not quite. If the traffic you get from your LinkedIn ads are more targeted, and convert better than that of your Facebook ads, you might find that LinkedIn works out to be more cost-effective.

It’s also wise to consider the product or service you’re selling here. For example, say you’re promoting your consulting agency on LinkedIn, and your average deal size is $5,000. Even if your CPC runs up to $10 or $20, you could still make a sizeable profit on each transaction.

But, if you own an eCommerce store selling novelty gifts and your Average Order Value is $10, it’s a different story. Even if your Facebook ads cost you $2 per click on average, this could significantly eat into your profit margins.

LinkedIn Ads: Pros and Cons

In this section, we’ll look at the advantages and disadvantages of LinkedIn ads, and discuss how these affect how you might run your ad campaign.

The two major advantages that LinkedIn brings to the table are:

  • Highly precise targeting for B2B audiences
  • An easy to use dashboard and interface

Pros

First up, LinkedIn allows advertisers to target their ads with laser-like precision. In addition to basic demographic targeting (age, gender, location), you can also set up your LinkedIn ads to target audiences based on:

  • Schools attended
  • Current employer
  • Previous employer(s)
  • Job title
  • Industry
  • Company size
  • LinkedIn groups joined
  • Keywords used in profile, title, company or school

If you want to target someone who went to Harvard Business School, previously worked at Facebook, and is currently employed at Google, you can do that with LinkedIn.

Likewise, if you want to target someone who graduated from Michigan State, and currently works as a marketing manager or director in a pharmaceutical company, you can do that too.

WIth LinkedIn ads you can target people with precision | linkedin ads vs facebook ads
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Pretty amazing, huh?

Another key benefit of LinkedIn is that it’s easy to set up and use your ad account.

Creating a Campaign Manager account on LinkedIn takes all of ten seconds. Once you’re done, you’ll enter your billing details, and then you can start running those ads.

Cons

On the other hand, here are some things that aren’t so great about LinkedIn:

  • It’s largely irrelevant for B2C companies
  • There are limited ad formats to choose from

First and foremost, if you’re not a B2B company, then there’s a 99% chance that you’ll find more success on Facebook (or even Google Ads) as opposed to LinkedIn.

Additionally, there’s also the fact that LinkedIn offers fewer ad formats than other ad platforms.

On the bright side, LinkedIn has added new ad formats over the past few years — they pushed out their Lead Gen Forms back in 2017, and started offering video ads just last year.

That said, it’s still trailing behind the likes of Facebook, which has tons of innovative ad formats (we’ll get to these in a bit).

Facebook Ads: Pros and Cons

Pros

The three major advantages that you get with Facebook ads are:

  • It offers highly precise targeting for the mass market
  • There are more ad types to choose from
  • It’s a much better fit for B2C companies

First up, Facebook offers tons of targeting options that allow you to zero in on your ideal customer. For instance, you can target based on:

  • General interests (e.g. Sports)
  • Brands that users are interested in (e.g. Nike)
  • Pages that users have Liked (e.g. a fitness influencer’s Facebook page)
  • Birthdays (e.g. users who have upcoming birthdays)
  • Friends’ birthdays (e.g. users who have friends with upcoming birthdays, and might want to buy gifts for them)

Furthermore, you can also retarget folks who have visited your website or signed up for your mailing list (LinkedIn offers this option as well).

We’ve been optimizing and auditing ad campaigns for years, and have looked at 100’s of accounts. LinkedIn Ads could be a valuable asset to add to your PPC strategy.

Get your own action plan with our proposal. We'll take a look at your account and give you actionable next steps you can immediately apply to your account for a better ROAS in the next 30 days.
Request a proposal

Choose From Different Ad Types

Next, Facebook also gives you plenty of ad types and formats to choose from, including:

  • Photo
  • Video
  • Carousel
  • Instant Experience
  • Stories
  • Messenger

One of the more innovative ad types here is Instant Experience; this basically opens up a full-screen landing page to engage your customer.

Facebook Instant Experience Ad Example
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As Facebook puts it, with an Instant Experience, you can allow your customers to “watch engaging videos and photos, swipe through carousels, tilt to pan and explore lifestyle images with tagged products – all in a single ad.”

These ads are specifically designed for mobile, and they load up to fifteen times faster than standard mobile web (this will almost definitely have an impact on your conversion rate).

The bottom line? Facebook offers more ad formats that you can customize to suit your needs; if you create an ad campaign on Facebook, the sky’s really the limit.

Cons

That’s not to say that Facebook is perfect, though. There are also some things that we don’t particularly like about Facebook ads, including:

  • Targeting B2B audiences is less effective on Facebook
  • There’s a steeper learning curve

First up, if you’re looking to reach out to a B2B audience, LinkedIn is still the advertising platform of choice.

To be fair, Facebook does allow you to target consumers based on job-related factors, including:

  • Education level
  • Field of study
  • Schools attended
  • Industry
  • Job title
  • Employer

But here’s the thing — like we discussed earlier, people create Facebook accounts in order to watch dog videos and keep in touch with their friends and family, NOT to professionally network.

Factor in all the privacy leaks and scares that we’ve had in the past few years, and we can safely assume that many B2B professionals would think twice about disclosing all their personal information on their Facebook profile.

People don't trust Facebook with personal info | LinkedIn ads vs facebook ads
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Privacy and Targeting

While they might state what industry they’re from, they might steer clear from putting the name of their company on their profile.

Obviously, this makes things tough when it comes to targeting. You have the option to target based on these criteria, but you might be getting access to a highly limited pool of Facebook users (because 99% of them aren’t sharing the relevant information on their profile).

Moving on, another disadvantage of Facebook ads is that it involves more complexity, and it’s less beginner-friendly.

First up, you’ll have to get acquainted with Facebook Business Manager, which isn’t easy to use. (There are hundreds of lengthy online guides that teach you how to use this tool — this pretty much says it all).

At the same time, because there are so many ad formats available on Facebook, this can make the process of setting up your first ad campaign more confusing and complex.

A Final Word on LinkedIn Ads vs Facebook Ads

So… Facebook Ads vs LinkedIn Ads — which is better?

At the end of the day, your choice really depends on the audience you’re trying to reach out to (and the ads you want to run).

What if it seems as though your audience MIGHT use both platforms? Well, in that case, your best bet is to create ad campaigns on both LinkedIn and Facebook, and see which gives you the best results.

Those case studies you read online might provide you with a handy frame of reference, but remember that your results will always vary based on your industry and product.

So get in there, and start testing things out yourself!

The post Creating Your First LinkedIn Ads Campaign – Part 3: LinkedIn Ads Vs Facebook Ads appeared first on Search Scientists.

]]> https://www.searchscientists.com/linkedin-ads-vs-facebook-ads/feed/ 0 Creating Your First LinkedIn Ads Campaign – Part 2: How To Set Up Your Ads (+ LinkedIn Ads Best Practices) https://www.searchscientists.com/linkedin-ads-best-practices/ https://www.searchscientists.com/linkedin-ads-best-practices/#respond Wed, 03 Apr 2019 10:26:29 +0000 https://www.searchscientists.com/?p=9275 New to running LinkedIn ads? You’re in the right place!

In this second installment of our LinkedIn series, we walk you through how to set up your first LinkedIn campaign and throw in some LinkedIn Ads best practices to help you maximize your campaign results.

The post Creating Your First LinkedIn Ads Campaign – Part 2: How To Set Up Your Ads (+ LinkedIn Ads Best Practices) appeared first on Search Scientists.

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In this second installment of our LinkedIn series, we walk you through how to set up your first LinkedIn campaign and throw in some LinkedIn Ads best practices. Combined together they’ll help you maximize your campaign results.

So, if you’re new to running LinkedIn ads you’re in the right place!

If you haven’t seen the first blog post in our series, hop on over and check it out: Creating Your First LinkedIn Ads Campaign – Part 1: The Low-Down On LinkedIn Ad Formats.

Otherwise, let’s get down to business!

How to set up LinkedIn Ads

To set up your very first LinkedIn Ads campaign, head to LinkedIn’s Marketing Solutions page, then click on the “Create ad” button.

Here, you’ll be prompted to create a Campaign Manager account.

Create an account in the Campaign Manager

Take a few seconds to fill in the necessary information, then click “Create account” to proceed.

Quick note: if your company doesn’t have a LinkedIn page yet, we recommend setting this up before you start running LinkedIn ads.

This way, folks who see your ad and search for your Company Page will be able to access your page – instead of drawing a blank.

Now, once this is done, you’ll be redirected to the Campaign Manager dashboard, which looks like this:

Campaign Manager Dashboard for LinkedIn Ads

That was fast, huh?

You’re not quite ready to start running ads, though. As the red bar at the top of the page states, you’ll have to enter your billing details before getting those ads out.

Creating your first campaign

After you’ve settled your billing details, navigate back to the main dashboard, and click on the “Create campaign” button.

Create your first LinkedIn Ads campaign

Here, you can name your campaign and choose your campaign objective (which will influence what ad format you’ll be using later on).

Name your campaign and give it an objective

If you’re wondering why some of the objectives are greyed out, that’s because what you’re seeing here is the beta version of LinkedIn’s new Campaign Manager. This means that not all the objectives are available in this version (at the time of publication).

For those of you who do want to use an objective that’s not available (eg Website conversions), click on “Change back” at the top right-hand corner, and you’ll be able to access that objective.

Turn off beta and go to normal mode

Once you’ve chosen your objective, the next step is to hone in on your target audience.

Targeting your audience

Select the audience for your LinkedIn Ads campaign

You can target your audience using a number of criteria, including:

  • Profile language
  • Locations
  • Company
  • Demographics
  • Education
  • Job experience
  • Interests

On top of that, you can even retarget people who have previously visited your website, so feel free to get creative!

Once you’re done with specifying your targeting, go ahead and choose your ad format.

Select the format for your ad

If you’re not sure what format you should use, take a look at Part One of our LinkedIn Ads guide where we discuss the various ad formats (and what they’re used for).

Finally, move on to determining your budget and schedule, as well as your Bid Type (Automated Bid or Maximum Bid).

Budget and schedule your ad

Not sure what these mean? We’ll break it down for you…

Choosing your Bid Type

With Automated Bid, LinkedIn’s system uses “historical campaign data and member information” to automatically set an optimal bid. This option charges by impression, which means that you’re charged whenever your ad is shown to your audience.

According to LinkedIn, this option will get you more results for your budget, but your advertising costs may be higher than if you were to use Maximum Bid.

With Maximum Bid, on the other hand, you’re 100% in control of your bid, and LinkedIn will not charge higher than your specified bid.

If you’re going for this option, you can choose from Cost Per Click (CPC), Cost Per 1,000 Impressions (CPM), or Cost Per View (CPV).

Read LinkedIn’s ad bidding tips to learn more about the different bid types, and the pros and cons of each type.

Now that you’re done with configuring your campaign, it’s time to set up your creatives. To do this, click on “Create new ad”.

Create new ad in LinkedIn Ads

Setting up your creatives

Now, what you’ll have to do here depends on the ad format you’ve chosen.

If you’re going for Text Ads, you’ll just have to input your headline and description, but if you’re creating video ads, you’ll obviously need to have video content on hand as well.

To learn more about the specs and guidelines for each type of ad, click here.

Once you’re done, click on the “Create” button, and you’re all set!

You’ll have to wait for LinkedIn to approve your ads before you can start running them, but that’s basically it.

LinkedIn is a platform that can provide another way to reach your target customers that's different than Google or Amazon. In our experience, adding this network to our clients' marketing mix has led to great results.

Request a proposal and get your own action plan on how you can integrate LinkedIn Ads in your PPC efforts.
Request a proposal

LinkedIn Ads best practices

Now that you’re familiar with how to create LinkedIn ads, we’ll walk you through the various LinkedIn Ads best practices that will get you more bang for your buck.

LinkedIn text Ads best practices

Best practices for LinkedIn text ads include:

  • Address your audience directly
  • Include an image
  • Include a strong Call To Action (CTA)
  • Test out different sizes and ratios
Ads in sidebar
Image Source

These are all fairly straightforward, so we won’t waste your time by expanding on each point.

Let’s move on to talk about LinkedIn dynamic ads!

LinkedIn Dynamic Ads Best Practices

Best practices for LinkedIn dynamic ads include:

  • Personalize your ads using your audience’s name and profile picture
  • Upload a custom background image to use with Spotlight ads
Spotlight ad example
Image Source

If you’re running LinkedIn dynamic ads, you’ll definitely want to take the opportunity to customize your ads and make them hyper-relevant to your audience.

First and foremost, when setting up your ad, check the box to enable your audience’s profile photo to be pulled into the ad.

We also recommend selecting the pre-set templates that allow each LinkedIn member’s name and company to appear in the text of the ad.

Assuming you’re running Spotlight ads (which are ads used to share content with your audience), you’ll also want to upload a custom background image for your ads.

These make your ad stand out more effectively, which in turn increases your click-through rates.

LinkedIn Carousel Ads Best Practices

Best practices for LinkedIn carousel ads include:

  • Keep your ads short and sweet
  • Include clear messages and CTAs on each card
  • Experiment with slotting your cards in different orders
Carousel ads example in LinkedIn Ads
Image Source

Firstly, LinkedIn recommends starting with 3 to 5 cards per carousel. You can test adding more cards from there, but generally speaking, shorter carousels tend to perform better.

Next, include clear messages and CTAs on each card. Don’t utilize the same message over and over again on all your cards… that’s just lazy!

Finally, experiment with slotting your cards in different orders. You’d be surprised – simply mixing the order of your cards up can produce starkly different results.

LinkedIn Sponsored Ads Best Practices

Best practices for LinkedIn sponsored ads include:

  • Keep headlines and copy short and sweet
  • Utilize large images
Sponsored ads in LinkedIn
Image Source

Like carousel ads, sponsored ads perform the best when they’re short and to the point.

How short is short? Well, LinkedIn recommends using ad headlines that are under 150 characters, and descriptive copy that’s under 70 characters.

Also, embed a larger image to use with your sponsored ad (instead of relying on a standard thumbnail).

Ideally, you’d want to upload an image that’s 1200 x 627 pixels. According to LinkedIn, this can improve your click-through rate by up to 38%.

LinkedIn Video Ads Best Practices

Best practices for LinkedIn video ads include:

  • Front-load your message in your video
  • Include subtitles in your video
Example of video ad on LinkedIn
Image Source

LinkedIn states that viewer attention drops off within 10 seconds of a video, so be sure to front-load any important information, and create a compelling “hook”.

On top of that, most viewers of video ads watch these ads with the sound off, so for more clarity, consider including subtitles in your videos.

You can’t create subtitles directly within LinkedIn, but here are 10 subtitle video editor tools that will get the job done.

A Final Word on Creating Your First LinkedIn Ads Campaign

Awesome stuff – you’re now equipped with all the skills and knowledge you need to get your first LinkedIn Ads campaign up and running!

Be sure to check back in for our last installment of this series, which covers the differences between LinkedIn ads and Facebook ads.

As always, if you’ve got any questions about getting started with LinkedIn ads, hit us up in the Comments section down below, and we’ll get back to you ASAP.

The post Creating Your First LinkedIn Ads Campaign – Part 2: How To Set Up Your Ads (+ LinkedIn Ads Best Practices) appeared first on Search Scientists.

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